Dawn O'Hara the Girl Who Laughed

by Edna Ferber

  And so the thing was settled, and an hour later three anxious-browed women were debating the weighty question of eggs or bread-and-milk for Bennie’s supper. Frau Nirlanger was for soft-boiled eggs as being none too heavy after orphan asylum fare; I was for bread-and-milk, that being the prescribed supper dish for all the orphans and waifs that I had ever read about, from “The Wide, Wide World” to “Helen’s Babies,” and back again. Frau Knapf was for both eggs and bread-and-milk with a dash of meat and potatoes thrown in for good measure, and a slice or so of Kuchen on the side. We compromised on one egg, one glass of milk, and a slice of lavishly buttered bread, and jelly. It was a clean, sweet, sleepy-eyed Bennie that we tucked between the sheets. We three women stood looking down at him as he lay there in the quaint old blue-painted bed that had once held the plump little Knapfs.

  “You think anyway he had enough supper? mused the anxious-browed Frau Knapf.

  “To school he will have to go, yes?” murmured Frau Nirlanger, regretfully.

  I tucked in the covers at one side of the bed, not that they needed tucking, but because it was such a comfortable, satisfying thing to do.

  “Just at this minute,” I said, as I tucked, “I’d rather be a newspaper reporter than anything else in the world. As a profession ‘tis so broadenin’, an’ at the same time, so chancey.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE TEST

  Some day the marriageable age for women will be advanced from twenty to thirty, and the old maid line will be changed from thirty to forty. When that time comes there will be surprisingly few divorces. The husband of whom we dream at twenty is not at all the type of man who attracts us at thirty. The man I married at twenty was a brilliant, morbid, handsome, abnormal creature with magnificent eyes and very white teeth and no particular appetite at mealtime. The man whom I could care for at thirty would be the normal, safe and substantial sort who would come in at six o’clock, kiss me once, sniff the air twice and say: “Mm! What’s that smells so good, old girl? I’m as hungry as a bear. Trot it out. Where are the kids?”

  These are dangerous things to think upon. So dangerous and disturbing to the peace of mind that I have decided not to see Ernst von Gerhard for a week or two. I find that seeing him is apt to make me forget Peter Orme; to forget that my duty begins with a capital D; to forget that I am dangerously near the thirty year old mark; to forget Norah, and Max, and the Spalpeens, and the world, and everything but the happiness of being near him, watching his eyes say one thing while his lips say another.

  At such times I am apt to work myself up into rather a savage frame of mind, and to shut myself in my room evenings, paying no heed to Frau Nirlanger’s timid knocking, or Bennie’s goodnight message. I uncover my typewriter and set to work at the thing which may or may not be a book, and am extremely wretched and gloomy and pessimistic, after this fashion:

  “He probably wouldn’t care anything about you if you were free. It is just a case of the fruit that is out of reach being the most desirable. Men don’t marry frumpy, snuffy old things of thirty, or thereabouts. Men aren’t marrying now-a-days, anyway. Certainly not for love. They marry for position, or power, or money, when they do marry. Think of all the glorious creatures he meets every day—women whose hair, and finger-nails and teeth and skin are a religion; women whose clothes are a fine art; women who are free to care only for themselves; to rest, to enjoy, to hear delightful music, and read charming books, and eat delicious food. He doesn’t really care about you, with your rumpled blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But you didn’t laugh. You rubbed it off, furiously, and you wanted to cry. Cry! You, Dawn O’Hara! Begorra! ‘Tis losin’ your sense av humor you’re after doin’! Get to work.”

  After which I would fall upon the book in a furious, futile fashion, writing many incoherent, irrelevant paragraphs which I knew would be cast aside as worthless on the sane and reasoning to-morrow.

  Oh, it had been easy enough to talk of love in a lofty, superior impersonal way that New Year’s day. Just the luxury of speaking of it at all, after those weeks of repression, sufficed. But it is not so easy to be impersonal and lofty when the touch of a coat sleeve against your arm sends little prickling, tingling shivers racing madly through thousands of too taut nerves. It is not so easy to force the mind and tongue into safe, sane channels when they are forever threatening to rush together in an overwhelming torrent that will carry misery and destruction in its wake. Invariably we talk with feverish earnestness about the book; about my work at the office; about Ernst’s profession, with its wonderful growth; about Norah, and Max and the Spalpeens, and the home; about the latest news; about the weather; about Peter Orme—and then silence.

  At our last meeting things took a new and startling turn. So startling, so full of temptation and happiness-that-must-not-be, that I resolved to forbid myself the pain and joy of being, near him until I could be quite sure that my grip on Dawn O’Hara was firm, unshakable and lasting.

  Von Gerhard sports a motor-car, a rakish little craft, built long and low, with racing lines, and a green complexion, and a nose that cuts through the air like the prow of a swift boat through water. Von Gerhard had promised me a spin in it on the first mild day. Sunday turned out to be unexpectedly lamblike, as only a March day can be, with real sunshine that warmed the end of one’s nose instead of laughing as it tweaked it, as the lying February sunshine had done.

  “But warmly you must dress yourself,” Von Gerhard warned me, “with no gauzy blouses or sleeveless gowns. The air cuts like a knife, but it feels good against the face. And a little road-house I know, where one is served great steaming plates of hot oyster stew. How will that be for a lark, yes?”

  And so I had swathed myself in wrappings until I could scarcely clamber into the panting little car, and we had darted off along the smooth lake drives, while the wind whipped the scarlet into our cheeks, even while it brought the tears to our eyes. There was no chance for conversation, even if Von Gerhard had been in talkative mood, which he was not. He seemed more taciturn than usual, seated there at the wheel, looking straight ahead at the ribbon of road, his eyes narrowed down to mere keen blue slits. I realized, without alarm, that he was driving furiously and lawlessly, and I did not care. Von Gerhard was that sort of man. One could sit quite calmly beside him while he pulled at the reins of a pair of runaway horses, knowing that he would conquer them in the end.

  Just when my face began to feel as stiff and glazed as a mummy’s, we swung off the roadway and up to the entrance of the road-house that was to revive us with things hot and soupy.

  “Another minute,” I said, through stiff lips, as I extricated myself from my swathings, “and I should have been what Mr. Mantalini described as a demnition body. For pity’s sake, tell ‘em the soup can’t be too hot nor too steaming for your lady friend. I’ve had enough fresh air to last me the remainder of my life. May I timidly venture to suggest that a cheese sandwich follow the oyster stew? I am famished, and this place looks as though it might make a speciality of cheese sandwiches.”

  “By all means a cheese sandwich. Und was noch? That fresh air it has given you an appetite, nicht wahr?” But there was no sign of a smile on his face, nor was the kindly twinkle of amusement to be seen in his eyes—that twinkle that I had learned to look for.

  “Smile for the lady,” I mockingly begged when we had been served. “You’ve been owlish all the afternoon. Here, try a cheese sandwich. Now, why do you suppose that this mustard tastes so much better than the kind one gets at home?”

  Von Gerhard had been smoking a cigarette, the first that I had ever seen in his fingers. Now he tossed it into the fireplace that yawned black and empty at one side of the room. He swept aside the plates and glasses that stood before him, leaned his arms on the table and deliberately stared at me.r />
  “I sail for Europe in June, to be gone a year— probably more,” he said.

  “Sail!” I echoed, idiotically; and began blindly to dab clots of mustard on that ridiculous sandwich.

  “I go to study and work with Gluck. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Gluck is to the world of medicine what Edison is to the world of electricity. He is a wizard, a man inspired. You should see him—a little, bent, grizzled, shabby old man who looks at you, and sees you not. It is a wonderful opportunity, a—”

  The mustard and the sandwich and the table and Von Gerhard’s face were very indistinct and uncertain to my eyes, but I managed to say: “So glad—congratulate you— very happy—no doubt fortunate—”

  Two strong hands grasped my wrists. “Drop that absurd mustard spoon and sandwich. Na, I did not mean to frighten you, Dawn. How your hands tremble. So, look at me. You would like Vienna, Kindchen. You would like the gayety, and the brightness of it, and the music, and the pretty women, and the incomparable gowns. Your sense of humor would discern the hollowness beneath all the pomp and ceremony and rigid lines of caste, and military glory; and your writer’s instinct would revel in the splendor, and color and romance and intrigue.”

  I shrugged my shoulders in assumed indifference. “Can’t you convey all this to me without grasping my wrists like a villain in a melodrama? Besides, it isn’t very generous or thoughtful of you to tell me all this, knowing that it is not for me. Vienna for you, and Milwaukee and cheese sandwiches for me. Please pass the mustard.”

  But the hold on my wrists grew firmer. Von Gerhard’s eyes were steady as they gazed into mine. “Dawn, Vienna, and the whole world is waiting for you, if you will but take it. Vienna—and happiness—with me—”

  I wrenched my wrists free with a dreadful effort and rose, sick, bewildered, stunned. My world—my refuge of truth, and honor, and safety and sanity that had lain in Ernst von Gerhard’s great, steady hands, was slipping away from me. I think the horror that I felt within must have leaped to my eyes, for in an instant Von Gerhard was beside me, steadying me with his clear blue eyes. He did not touch the tips of my fingers as he stood there very near me. From the look of pain on his face I knew that I had misunderstood, somehow.

  “Kleine, I see that you know me not,” he said, in German, and the saying it was as tender as is a mother when she reproves a child that she loves. “This fight against the world, those years of unhappiness and misery, they have made you suspicious and lacking in trust, is it not so? You do not yet know the perfect love that casts out all doubt. Dawn, I ask you in the name of all that is reasoning, and for the sake of your happiness and mine, to divorce this man Peter Orme—this man who for almost ten years has not been your husband—who never can be your husband. I ask you to do something which will bring suffering to no one, and which will mean happiness to many. Let me make you happy—you were born to be happy—you who can laugh like a girl in spite of your woman’s sorrows—”

  But I sank into a chair and hid my face in my hands so that I might be spared the beauty and the tenderness of his eyes. I tried to think of all the sane and commonplace things in life. Somewhere in my inner consciousness a cool little voice was saying, over and over again:

  “Now, Dawn, careful! You’ve come to the crossroads at last. Right or left? Choose! Now, Dawn, careful!” and the rest of it all over again.

  When I lifted my face from my hands at last it was to meet the tenderness of Von Gerhard’s gaze with scarcely a tremor.

  “You ought to know,” I said, very slowly and evenly, “that a divorce, under these circumstances, is almost impossible, even if I wished to do what you suggest. There are certain state laws—”

  An exclamation of impatience broke from him. “Laws! In some states, yes. In others, no. It is a mere technicality—a trifle! There is about it a bit of that which you call red tape. It amounts to nothing—to that!” He snapped his fingers. “A few months’ residence in another state, perhaps. These American laws, they are made to break.”

  “Yes; you are quite right,” I said, and I knew in my heart that the cool, insistent little voice within had not spoken in vain. “But there are other laws—laws of honor and decency, and right living and conscience—that cannot be broken with such ease. I cannot marry you. I have a husband.”

  “You can call that unfortunate wretch your husband! He does not know that he has a wife. He will not know that he has lost a wife. Come, Dawn—small one—be not so foolish. You do not know how happy I will make you. You have never seen me except when I was tortured with doubts and fears. You do not know what our life will be together. There shall be everything to make you forget—everything that thought and love and money can give you. The man there in the barred room—”

  At that I took his dear hands in mine and held them close as I miserably tried to make him hear what that small, still voice had told me.

  “There! That is it! If he were free, if he were able to stand before men that his actions might be judged fairly and justly, I should not hesitate for one single, precious moment. If he could fight for his rights, or relinquish them, as he saw fit, then this thing would not be so monstrous. But, Ernst, can’t you see? He is there, alone, in that dreadful place, quite helpless, quite incapable, quite at our mercy. I should as soon think of hurting a little child, or snatching the pennies from a blind man’s cup. The thing is inhuman! It is monstrous! No state laws, no red tape can dissolve such a union.”

  “You still care for him!”

  “Ernst!”

  His face was very white with the pallor of repressed emotion, and his eyes were like the blue flame that one sees flashing above a bed of white-hot coals.

  “You do care for him still. But yes! You can stand there, quite cool—but quite—and tell me that you would not hurt him, not for your happiness, not for mine. But me you can hurt again and again, without one twinge of regret.”

  There was silence for a moment in the little bare dining-room—a miserable silence on my part, a bitter one for Ernst. Then Von Gerhard seated himself again at the table opposite and smiled one of the rare smiles that illumined his face with such sweetness.

  “Come, Dawn, almost we are quarreling—we who were to have been so matter-of-fact and sensible. Let us make an end of this question. You will think of what I have said, will you not? Perhaps I was too abrupt, too brutal. Ach, Dawn, you know not how I—Very well, I will not.”

  With both hands I was clinging to my courage and praying for strength to endure this until I should be alone in my room again.

  “As for that poor creature who is bereft of reason, he shall lack no care, no attention. The burden you have borne so long I shall take now upon my shoulders.”

  He seemed so confident, so sure. I could bear it no longer. “Ernst, if you have any pity, any love for me, stop! I tell you I can never do this. Why do you make it so terribly hard for me! So pitilessly hard! You always have been so strong, so sure, such a staff of courage.”

  “I say again, and again, and again, you do not care.”

  It was then that I took my last vestige of strength and courage together and going over to him, put my two hands on his great shoulders, looking up into his drawn face as I spoke.

  “Ernst, look at me! You never can know how much I care. I care so much that I could not bear to have the shadow of wrong fall upon our happiness. There can be no lasting happiness upon a foundation of shameful deceit. I should hate myself, and you would grow to hate me. It always is so. Dear one, I care so much that I have the strength to do as I would do if I had to face my mother, and Norah tonight. I don’t ask you to understand. Men are not made to understand these things; not even a man such as you, who are so beautifully understanding. I only ask that you believe in me—and think of me sometimes—I shall feel it, and be helped. Will you take me home now, Dr. von Gerhard?”

  The ride home was made in silence. The wind was colder, sharper. I was chilled, miserable, sick. Von Gerhard’s face was quite expressionless as he g
uided the little car over the smooth road. When we had stopped before my door, still without a word, I thought that he was going to leave me with that barrier of silence unbroken. But as I stepped stiffly to the curbing his hands closed about mine with the old steady grip. I looked up quickly, to find a smile in the corners of the tired eyes.

  “You—you will let me see you—sometimes?”

  But wisdom came to my aid. “Not now. It is better that we go our separate ways for a few weeks, until our work has served to adjust the balance that has been disturbed. At the end of that time I shall write you, and from that time until you sail in June we shall be just good comrades again. And once in Vienna—who knows?—you may meet the plump blond Fraulein, of excellent family—”

  “And no particular imagination—”

  And then we both laughed, a bit hysterically, because laughter is, after all, akin to tears. And the little green car shot off with a whir as I turned to enter my new world of loneliness.

  CHAPTER XIV

  BENNIE AND THE CHARMING OLD MAID

  There followed a blessed week of work—a “human warious” week, with something piquant lurking at every turn. A week so busy, so kaleidoscopic in its quick succession of events that my own troubles and grievances were pushed into a neglected corner of my mind and made to languish there, unfed by tears or sighs.

  News comes in cycles. There are weeks when a city editor tears his hair in vain as he bellows for a first-page story. There follow days so bristling with real, live copy that perfectly good stuff which, in the ordinary course of events might be used to grace the front sheet, is sandwiched away between the marine intelligence and the Elgin butter reports.

  Such a week was this. I interviewed everything from a red-handed murderer to an incubator baby. The town seemed to be running over with celebrities. Norberg, the city editor, adores celebrities. He never allows one to escape uninterviewed. On Friday there fell to my lot a world-famous prima donna, an infamous prizefighter, and a charming old maid. Norberg cared not whether the celebrity in question was noted for a magnificent high C, or a left half-scissors hook, so long as the interview was dished up hot and juicy, with plenty of quotation marks, a liberal sprinkling of adjectives and adverbs, and a cut of the victim gracing the top of the column.